Question #1: If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
[silence]
Question #2: If we sell anti capitalist t-shirts, does that makes us a sellout, too?
[silence]
Yes, the world is full of gilded scenesters and prepubescent emophiles that want to look cool by following the trend of rebellion. That said, selling them and the general public anti-capitalist t-shirts does not make you a sellout, per se. Why? Visit Communist theory favors your argument.
Small philosophy lesson: The driver of the economy determines its nature. According to Marxist-Leninist two-stage theory, society must pass through a stage of capitalism in order to transition into Socialism, and then Communism. Granted, this was for oppressed countries in the Third World. Nevertheless, the First World is currently in decline from siding with the unregulated free market, and the seeds for making it to Stage Two are sown with effective propaganda.
Here’s a quote from Nikolai Bukharin, a pioneer of Marxist theory, who collectivized printing presses to cheaply disseminate Marxist literature: [The] propaganda of communism becomes in the long run a means for the eradication of the last traces of bourgeois propaganda dating from the old régime; and it is a powerful instrument for the creation of a new ideology”.
So, my rationale is that, selling t-shirts with an anti-capitalist stance doesn’t necessarily elicit being a sellout. You would be selling clothing that contains the necessary agitation to further your goals towards an egalitarian, socialist society, and are funding your operation in this stage of capitalism to eventually overthrow it.
So, carry on, comrades. Print those tees and move FORWARD.
